Saturday, October 11, 2008

In a debate tonight amongst the candidates for MN Senate (Coleman, Franken. Barkley), Franken noted that Clarence Thomas is the most activist of the justices because Thomas has voted to overturned legislation more than any of the others. I've been meaning to post something supportive of LJ who commented on the meaning of "activist" a while back, but hadn't gotten to it. But this note from Franken, if he's right, backs LJ up.

There IS a RICO investigation of ACORN and the Obama campaign underway - this has now been established by the mainstream media. Right now it’s rumored here in Chicago that Patrick Fitzgerald is heading it (confirmation on that has not come yet). There is a lot of activity in Chicago right now, with a lot of IRS agents looking into the finances coming in and out of this city, and across state lines (this was established on Monday when the GOP issued emergency press releases that much of Obama’s campaign contributions could very well be illegal foreign contributions - what appears to be deliberately poor record keeping designed to hide the true identities and monetary sources of online donors is at issue here). We see in 15 states now that ACORN is being busted for attempted voter fraud, and for fraudulent, illegal voter registrations in the hundreds of thousands, if not a million. The article below states, and we have confirmed this with people who know for sure, that the people who gathered evidence of Obama’s fraud and voter intimidation techniques during the primaries against Hillary Clinton are sharing everything they have with the Republican Party and the federal government. [Ace]

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's campaign distanced itself Thursday from its $800,000 payment linked to the liberal ACORN organization, which is under investigation in several states where it is suspected of filing fraudulent voter registrations.

Federal Election Commission reports show ACORN-affiliated Citizens Services Inc. got $832,598 from the Obama campaign for get-out-the-vote work during the primaries. [Geraghty]

ARLINGTON, VA -- Today, McCain-Palin 2008 released the following statement signed by 100 distinguished and experienced economists at major American universities and research organizations, including five Nobel Prize winners Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Robert Mundell, Edward Prescott, and Vernon Smith. The economists explain why Barack Obama's proposals, including "misguided tax hikes," would "decrease the number of jobs in America." The prospects of such tax rate increases under Barack Obama are already harming the economy. The economists conclude that "Barack Obama's economic proposals are wrong for the American economy." The proposals "defy both economic reason and economic experience."

With [anti-American Venezuelan despot Hugo] Chavez at his side, Ayers voiced his support for "the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how . . . all of you continue to overcome the failures of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane."

I get a lot of email from self-described liberals, independents and conservatives these days who all seem to think alike. To wit: they all use very similar language about how conservatives are dishonorably talking about things that just happen to be inconvenient to the Obama campaign, that we're inviting violence against Obama, that I/we/the Corner should be ashamed of this, that, or the other thing.

For instance, during the first days after the Sarah Palin pick, when the Obama campaign was shaken, I was amazed by how many emails from self-identified "longtime fans" and others who've been "reading me for years" who told me how much they hoped I would tell the truth about the consumate evilness of Sarah Palin. The language was similar, the tactics identical: Butter me up, tell me that I alone have the integrity to tell the hard truths. Now it's not that I don't think some liberals can be fans of mine. Nor is it that I think everyone of these people is sitting in some huge room full of computers in David Axelrod's basement. But, there's simply something fraudulent in the tone, tenor and number of emails I get along these lines. I don't know if Obamaphiles get tips about how to email conservatives or if there's an astroturfing operation at work or if this is simply an example of talking points and tactics working themselves out virally. But it just feels too coordinated for me to take entirely seriously.

We are too hung up on the word terrorist. Yes, Ayers was a terrorist, but he's not anymore in the sense that he hasn't bombed anything in a long time. He is, however, and he has always been, a radical leftist revolutionary. Don't take my word for it -- he proudly says it himself, as I detailed in this post yesterday.

That was the ideology that drove him to bomb American targets, it is the ideology he has taken to America's classrooms (which are just a different front in the same war he has been raging against our society for 40 years), it is the ideology he has never hidden from anyone, and -- here's the point -- it is the ideology that drove his partnership with Barack Obama. That's the reason Obama is minimizing the relationship. Obama and Ayers worked well together -- happily funding the same communists, socialists, America haters, Israel haters, etc. -- because they were ideologically aligned. Obama is smoother and more marketable than Ayers, but ideologically they're coming from the same place: American society needs drastic change. And if you want to know the change Obama and Ayers have in mind, look at what they did at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Look at Obama's Chicago years, which explains why Ayers and Dohrn would host the launching of his political career from their living room. That's where Obama doesn't want to go -- because if voters look there, he's toast.

First, is a book I haven't read it yet, because I'm working through the series from the beginning. But Stephen Hunter has a new Bob Lee Swagger book: Night of Thunder. I'm a huge Hunter fan and a little escapism might be in order these days.

I don't know enough about ACORN to defend it, but I do see the potential for them having been set up. As I commented, it would be illegal for ACORN or anyone else to toss out completed voter registration forms, even if they suspect that they're not legit.

"Over the past year, ACORN has worked hard to help over 80,000 people in Clark County register to vote. As part of our nonpartisan voter registration program, we have reviewed all the applications submitted by our canvassers. When we have identified suspicious applications, we have separated them out and flagged them for election officials. We have zero tolerance for fraudulent registrations. We immediately dismiss employees we suspect of submitting fraudulent registrations.For the past 10 months, any time ACORN has identified a potentially fraudulent application, we turn that application into election officials separately and offer to provide election officials with the information they would need to pursue an investigation or prosecution of the individual.

Election officials routinely ignored this information and failed to act. In early July, ACORN asked to meet with election officials to express our concerns that they were not acting on information ACORN had presented to them. ACORN met with Clark County elections officials and a representative of the Secretary of State on July 17th. ACORN pleaded with them to take our concerns about fraudulent applications seriously. One week later, elections officials asked us to provide them with a second copy of what we had previously provided to them. ACORN responded by giving election officials copies of 46 "problem application packages," which involved 33 former canvassers.

On September 23, ACORN had received a subpoena dated September 19th requesting information on 15 employees, all of whom had been included in the packages we had previously submitted to election officials. ACORN provided our personnel records on these 15 employees on September 29.

Today's raid by the Secretary of State's Office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than discredit our work registering Nevadans and distracting us from the important work ahead of getting every eligible voter to the polls."

The past couple of months, I've gone back to listening to all the AM talk shows (not Laura Ingram - they have moved her from her morning time slot. Not sure when she is on anymore, but that's OK, she got on my nerves). It just cracks me up to hear these folks and all the kool-aide drinkers that call in. Today, I heard some guy say that the reason the market/economy is going down the tubes has nothing to due with Fannie/Freddie or sub-prime or credit or the like. The reason? Investors are worried about Obama being elected. According to this "expert", you can tie the collapse in the past few weeks to when it appeared that Obama was going to win. As that became more and more likely, investors are selling more and more. And of course, the host of the show agreed with him.

It also seems as if all the radio hacks have gotten the talking points to stop calling Obama a liberal. That isn't extreme enough, Now he is either communist, a socialist, a terrorist or some combination of the 3. It's so obvious that the word has gone out to change the labels en mass it's funny.

However, it's not funny enough to keep me listening. I can't take it. And even if I agreed with the far rightie mentality, I don't think I could listen to this stuff all day, every day. So I'm back out....I'd rather listen to Dallas Cowboy talk, as sickening as that is.

Did you watch "The Decider" from the Rose Garden? Did you notice that as he was speaking, the market went down 100 points? The best thing "The Decider" can do is to stay holed up in the White House and write Obama a funny personal note to read on Inauguration Day.

I know an actual, honest-to-god 60/70's radical who was part of a group with a name and who participated in vandalism of draft office. I don't condone vandalism of draft offices. He lives a quiet, peaceful life these days and, to my knowledge, hasn't vandalized anything since the 70s. If this man asked me to serve on a board with him to dispense charitable funds, I'd do it.

these new revelations by Stanley Kurtz. Barry and Ayers, while at Woods and CAC, funnelled lots of money to ACORN. ACORN pressured banks to make these crappy loans. When the banks balked, saying that Freddie and Fannie wouldn't buy the loans bc of their stricter standards, ACORN went to the Dems in DC and pressured them to loosen the standards. That is the genesis of this whole mess. Plus Barry was a "trainer" at ACORN, was tight with the Chicago bigwigs at ACORN, and filed suits on its behalf against Citibank and others to force them to make crappy loans.

Just a guy in my neighborhood??? No wonder Barry lied.

Does any of that trouble you?

How about the fact that ACORN is regularly investigated and indicted for voter fraud? Should a presidential candidate be tight with these people? Only if he believes what they believe.

The Dow plunged almost 600 more points today to close below 9000. It's down 39% since Oct. 9, 2007.

Shouldn't our President be on our TV screens tonight telling us what's up? Each and every day, we should be hearing from him. He should tell us what Paulson did today. I want to know what Paulson ate for breakfast. I want to know who he met with and what checks he wrote and why he wrote them.

And the President should be assuring people or warning people or apologizing or something.

Good grief. I'm a pretty fearless investor and until today I've been pretty calm about the whole thing, figuring it would all bounce back in time for me to retire with investments having outpaced inflation. But today I am officially freaked out.

you should read this commentary by Daniel Gross at Slate. It's all worth reading and hard to snip, but I'll give you this since I know how some of you love your Krauthammer:

I await the Krauthammer column in which he points out the specific provision of the Community Reinvestment Act that forced Bear Stearns to run with an absurd leverage ratio of 33 to 1, which instructed Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers to blow up hundreds of millions of their clients' money, and that required its septuagenarian CEO to play bridge while his company ran into trouble.

writes an op-ed column in the NYT. I don't know anything about her and usually just skim over her pieces bc they never seem very interesting. Today she writes a deeply dishonest column about Barry and Ayers.

I heard a piece on NPR Saturday about Trinity and its Tongan football players, and meant to post something and ask LJ to comment. Here's a story on the front page of the NYT. LJ, this school has to be near you. Do you have any local flavor to add?

UPDATE: LJ points out that I called it Liberty High, and I've corrected that mistake.

I'm struck, rather, by her closing line. At the end, where, after reading the incendiary quote [the Madeleine Albright line about women not helping women], she says, "and now, California, let's see what a comment like I just made, how that is turned into whatever it's turned into tomorrow in the newspaper." Presumably, what the newspapers will report is that she...uttered this comment. But you're seeing this in a lot of Palin comments: She's using the media's treatment of her as a way to evade responsibility for her own statements. When she says something crazy and the media reports that she said something crazy, well wouldn't you just know they'd do that? Just shows how much they hate us, and in turn, how much you should hate them. Wink.

Monday, October 06, 2008

I watched it this morning at NBC's website here. It got lots of pub today from the right as a pretty fair assessment of the situation. At 7:45 tonight it was "video not found." Could just be to high demand or a glitch.

I don't want to get into some big argument about DDT or Rachel Carson and will refuse to engage. I've always admitted that my leftmost bone is my green bone. I recall reading about ddt as a kid and being all in favor of saving the eagles. Having said that, the right-wing Sierra Club at least acknowledges that its indoor use could do some good against malaria in Africa:

Malaria kills millions of people in Africa every year. Under closely controlled conditions and as part of a broader, integrated response, Sierra Club agrees that DDT should only be used in accordance with limiting provisions agreed to by more than 150 nations in the Stockholm Convention. Further, many effective non-toxic and less toxic alternatives are available and affordable, such as cleaning mosquito breeding areas, use of treated nets and early malaria detection and treatment programs. Sierra Club believes that DDT should be considered as the option of last resort only, when all feasible non-toxic and less toxic alternatives have been tried and proven ineffective. Sierra Club encourages governments and the WHO to give priority to increasing the informed use and accelerated development of such non-toxic and less toxic alternatives.

I don't want to mislead; the Sierra Club still loathes ddt but at least acknowledges that its judicious use could save a few lives.

The cable giant and Austin's local NBC affiliate are in a p------- match. In fact, last week KXAN stopped being shown on cable so if I want to watch NBC, I have to unplug from the cable box and hook up the antenna.

For those of us old enough to remember Austin in the pre-cable days, reception in Austin is awful.

KXAN's side of story here and TW's here if anyone is interested. I'm not since I watch almost no network TV but I don't think I've ever heard of a battle like this.

I spent the weekend at a Minnesota resort/cabin with my book club, so I went 48 hours without having any internet/television/radio. It's very pleasant to disconnect from the nonsense and I'm hesitant to get hooked again. I wonder if I could just keep my eyes closed until after the election; it's going to be like watching sausage get made from here on in.

The resort belongs to the parents of one of the women in my book club, Kerry. Kerry's dad sold year books for a living, which was a school year job. He bought this little resort (a lodge and 7 cabins) when Kerry was young. Kerry has 8 siblings, and the kids all worked (and played) at the resort every summer growing up. How idyllic does that sound? The same families would come as guests summer after summer and made life-long friends with Kerry's family.

The resort is on the shores of Long Lake about 3.5 hours north and west of Minneapolis, very near Itasca State Park (where the Mississippi River begins, familiar to Michael). Her parents operated it as a resort until two years ago, though they are in their 80s. Her dad has progressing Alzheimer's, so the family is in the midst of the difficult task of figuring out how to divvy it up amongst the nine kids.

A bald eagle nests yards from the cabins we stayed in; many times a day we got to watch it soaring past the windows as it came and went from the nest and hunted for fish along the shoreline. Also saw trumpeter swans in a pond nearby. Had never seen one before.

Update: I meant to end with "GODDAMN those anti-DDT environmentalists. If it weren't for them, my view of the tops of 120-year old pine trees against a bright blue sky wouldn't have been obscured by that stinking eagle."

"I was a full professor once upon a time. Chairman of the department. Hard to believe, isn't it, considering the company I keep these days? Don't think for a moment I'm not aware of that." His head bobbed. "American literature, that was my specialty. Huck Finn. Moby-Dick. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Ah, the stories I could tell you, the depth of my insights...Do you read much, Rikki?"

The novel, the second in a trilogy is set about 25 years in the future in the Islamic Republic (capital in Seattle). The character speaking is a religious nutjob who lives in the Bible Belt (capital in Atlanta); that is why I couldn't tell whether the reference was complimentary.

For Michael: earlier in the novel we learn a main character had developed an entirely new set of mathematics that he called the Derbyshire Laws or something like that with Derb's name in it.

I must have enjoyed the book since I finished in two sittings. B+ Airport Fiction.